How to Hire A Squarespace SEO Expert - with Questions

Content

This post will help you find resources to hire a Squarespace SEO Expert and ask the right (not the wrong) questions.

Brief

In this post, you will find resources that help you find a Squarespace SEO Expert online, answer a few questions, and a few things to look out for along the way.

There are many ways you can find what you are looking for with Squarespace SEO services. For instance, there are

• Courses (like this course: Optimize Squarespace SEO Like A Pro)

• Experts (like the Squarespace Marketplace)

• Agencies (like us, Launch Happy)

• YouTube Videos (like Digital Essentialist)

Yes, we just plugged our brand - but it’s because we care. We want you to know you have resources. Also, you can utilize any of the above resources to find a whole list of additional provides. 🤎

How much does it cost to hire a Squarespace SEO Expert?

The cost may vary widely, as it does with all agency services. Our packages range from around $175-$700, depending on the amount of work. For a one-time service, on a 5-10 page website, I’d imagine somewhere between $300-$800 to be reasonable. And just to emphasis, the amount of work the expert is doing can vary widely.

Is it worth hiring an SEO Expert?

Yes! It’s completely worth it. Even if you have the time, it’s valuable and important to start off on the right foot. It’s like buying a car. I prefer to buy a car from a professional manufacturer, rather than piece together myself, even if I understand the basic concepts (wheels, an engine, and air-conditioning… how hard can it be?). The example is far-fetched, but it’s valuable to spend the time initially to get proper keyword research, your site settings in order, and on-page SEO complete. This is what we do in our 100-Point SEO checklist for clients. It’s a solid foundation for them to begin, even if their site has been up for years.

How to choose a Squarespace SEO Expert

There are a few main questions you can ask. But right before we get into that, let’s start this dialogue with healthy expectations: SEO takes time. It takes as much time as you invest into it. The more time you invest into creating content, integrating SEO-friendly features into your website, and giving people useful information, the more it will pay dividends. Is there a guarantee?

This process takes time. No one controls Google - and Google recommends never working with someone who 'guarantee's any ranking. You may see immediate results in the coming two weeks and improvements, but overall, most of this just takes time. The work you do today with SEO begins to show itself over the course of months, not days. Unless of course, you publish 100 high-quality articles today, there are so many factors that just take time to see progress.

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Now that we have that out of the way, let’s ask a few key questions:

1. What type of work does your agency do outside of SEO or is it only SEO?

2. Do you work primarily with Squarespace or other platforms (like Wix, Weebly, or Webflow)?

3. Is this a one-time or an on-going service?

4. What Google tools do you use to optimize my website?

5. Do you outsource any of your work?

Bonus points: If the SEO expert can ‘speak in layman’s terms.’ SEO is a confusing topic and the less you understand, the less you can know what to expect. Look for an expert or agency that can help you understand what he or she is doing.

A few thoughts on the questions above:

1. What type of work does you (as an expert) or agency do outside of SEO or is it only SEO?

Ideally you want an expert or agency that doesn’t do too much outside of SEO. For many, SEO is an add-on service, which only leads to poor professional experience.

2. Do you work primarily with Squarespace or other platforms like Wix, Weebly, WordPress, or Webflow (… whyyyy do they all start with W??)?

Again, the ideal case would be that the expert or agency isn’t spread too thin. For us, we can do SEO projects for other platforms like Wix, Weebly, Wordpress, or Webflow, but we keep 95% of our work to Squarespace. That way, we are up to date with all the tools, tricks, and tips inside the platform to best serve our 50+ new clients every month.

3. Is this a one-time or an on-going service?

Unless an expert or agency is writing for you high-quality content each month, we have not found on-going SEO services to be fruitful for small businesses. If your website isn’t getting 10,000+ visitors a month, on-going SEO service doesn’t seem worthwhile. That is our rule-of-thumb. There are exceptions to this rule. If the SEO provider will be creating valuable content, awesome! The on-going service is great. If your site is receiving 10k+ visitors a month, invest in an SEO strategy and expert to navigate SEO titles and descriptions, URL slugs, content ideas, and more!

4.What Google tools do you use to optimize my website?

I personally love this question. Ideally, in order, you would want the expert/agency to use:

1. Google Search Console (GSC)

2. Google My Business (if applicable)

3. Google Analytics

4. Google Tag Manager (bonus points if they use this, but not necessary)

5. Double bonus if they have managed Google Ad campaigns

The top 3 tools are essential to a professionals work. For our clients, we always use tools 1-3. Depending on the clients needs, we may use 4 and 5, as well.

You may be asking: Why is Google Search Console more important than Google My Business/Google Analytics? Primarily because Google Search Console is what I like to call ‘Google Support.’ Google Search Console is a powerful tool to quickly and easily tweak your search results to show up as you want them to show up. It is the manual way of knocking on Google’s door, asking for support, and asking them to crawl/index your specific content. It’s the perfect example of software being a powerful solution for tech support.

5. Do you outsource any of your work?

Make sure the expert or agency is not outsourcing your work to someone on Fiverr for backlinks or promising results. These are major red flags that can negatively affect your ranking. It’s okay if they have an SEO expert on the team do the work, but just ensure the work isn’t being pushed off to unreliable sources.

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Our Most Popular FAQ

And just for fun: Clients who come to work with us for the first time ask great questions and some questions that - bless their hearts - are unhealthy expectations. The most popular questions we receive are:

• My site isn’t coming up on Google, can you help?

• I want my site to show up as #1 on Google. Can you help?**

• I’m launching my site this week, but I’m not coming up.. can you help?**

• How will this help me get more traffic?

• Will you be able to move her (client) to the top search position on google as she was before?

• My site is performing poorly on x, y, or z audit tool (like SEMRush, Neil Patel’s SEO Audit tool, Pingdom, etc), can you improve the results?***

**These question are major red flags, as no one can promise results.
***This question will need it’s article post one day, but for now, it’s really hard for an expert to improve the ranking of an audit tool like SEM Rush, Pingdom, or any other SEO analyzer. Each of these platforms use their own process to analyze a website and the results are not always accurate of actual user experience.

Feel free to use the comments as a place to further the discussion below.